Scaling new heights

CANON CITY — Springtime is the signal to break out all that outdoors gear.

Rock climbers, in particular, have begun turning out in droves at one of the more popular climbing sites in the Canon City area.

Kyle Sullivan, a public affairs specialist for the Bureau of Land Management Front Range District, said the Shelf Road climbing area will remain a busy place until weather conditions warm up in the high country and climbers can tackle the more challenging peaks.

For the time being, they are busy scaling the string of limestone cliffs that rise approximately 100 feet in height, Sullivan said.

“On weekends, the climbing area will have hundreds of people. There are thousands of climbing routes in this area,” he he said.

“I was out there a couple of week ago and saw young and old, women and men. There are easy routes and also some pretty hard routes. All are bolted by someone who already has climbed (the cliffs).”

The Shelf Road area is 15 miles north of Canon City on Red Canyon Road and is open to the public year-round.

There are a couple of campgrounds for overnight visitors, but for most climbers it is a day trip. There is a $7 nightly camping fee.

“There also are a lot of good hiking trails,” Sullivan said, noting that most of the trails were designed to access the climbing routes.

“The (camp) sites fill up pretty quickly this time of the year but are not as bad in the summer,” Sullivan said.

The late Mark Hesse, founder of the Rocky Mountain Field Institute in Colorado Springs, played a key role for more than 20 years in the operation of the Shelf Road climbing area.

He met with BLM officials in the early 1990s to promote Shelf Road and Penitente Canyon in their growing popularity as climbing areas.

Concerned that non-managed use of the climbing areas would lead to damage to the cliffs but also conflict among climbers, Hesse worked with the BLM to take a pro-active stance and get ahead of the crush of climbers who were beginning to use the areas